You could have given me a million years, and I still wouldn't have come up with the word "limiting" as a less abrasive synonym for the word "immature" . . . but it only took a female colleague thirty seconds to massage my tone in an e-mail to an administrator, with that simple substitution . . . I guess I need one of these "smart thesauruses" implanted in my brain so that I don't extemporaneously say or write anything stupid, but then, of course, I wouldn't be Dave anymore.
I Am So Much Smarter Than My Students
"The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a science-fiction short story by written in 1973 by Ursula Le Guin, and if you've never read it, you certainly should -- it's one of the most memorable sci-fi stories ever written -- but it is not a lot of fun; it is a philosophical allegory about a perfect city, Omelas, and the heavy cost of having such a society . . . because Omelas can only continue its existence if a single child is keep in squalor, ignored and isolated in a dark cell . . . and everyone in the city knows of the existence of this child, and knows that Omelas can only exist if the child is kept in this desolate state; most citizens of Omelas can live with the mathematics of this hedonistic calculus, but there are those that can't . . . those that "walk away from Omelas" because they cannot bear to live with this utilitarian bargain; so I made my students write about this and come up with examples of people who "walk away from Omelas," and though they came up with some decent examples (the Amish, Thoreau, people who join the Peace Corp) they couldn't compete with my examples -- I think I would do very well if I took my own English course! -- and so here they are: 1) becoming a vegetarian . . . most of us know that some animal was kept in a tiny cell, just like the child in the story, so that meat can appear on our plates, and we are willing to live with the system because meat is cheap and plentiful, but there are those that opt out for ethical reasons and stop participating in meat consumption 2) the genteel Southern plantation . . . women in fancy dresses, men smoking pipes and discussing issues of the Enlightenment, while the slaves worked the fields out back . . . some freed their slaves, but even great men like Thomas Jefferson couldn't walk away from that peculiar Omelas 3) the hippie I was talking to in Vermont at Thanksgiving, who lives off the grid in a solar powered house with a propane powered refrigerator, he spent six months at luthier school building his own guitar . . . and when I asked him if he liked to snowboard, he made me feel really bad about my lifestyle, because he said, "No, me and my girlfriend like to sled," and then he went on to describe all the sledding they do by their house, which is on a Class IV road, and I felt very bad about myself, since I require large corporations to tear apart a mountain, build giant trails, funiculars, bars, restaurants, snow-making equipment, and all sorts of other infrastructure before I can go and have some fun in the snow.
I Am Average!
The average American male's self-reported weight has increased from 180 pounds in 1990 to 196 pounds in 2012 . . . and I am wondering if I am the only person they used to complete this study . . . because that is a fairly accurate appraisal of my weight in 1990 and my weight in 2012 (I am usually a few pounds under 196, but after the holidays that's about right).
The Tent is Like a Castle
So far, the new Dave Eggers book A Hologram for the King reminds me of a modernized version of The Castle, by Frank Kafka; Alan just can't seem to make contact with Karim al-Ahmad, his liaison to the Saudi King, and so he and his young companions sit listlessly in the presentation tent, wondering if they will ever get to make their business pitch . . . just as K. -- the land surveyor -- spends the entire length of the Kafka novel fruitlessly trying to gain access to the eponymous castle . . . in the end, he never gets to meet with his contact authority, Klamm, and instead has strange adventures in the village, on the outskirts . . . and while it is hard to recommend the absurd Kafka novels The Castle and The Trial because (spoiler alert!) the protagonists never gain any satisfaction, closure, or knowledge about their predicaments, I will give the Eggers novel a tentative thumbs up -- though I am only half-way through and have no idea if there will be a similarly frustrating finish -- but my thumb is up because Alan has a penchant for telling cheesy long-winded jokes, so though you feel as if you are waiting eternally in an infinite sea of sand for something to happen, at least there are a few punch-lines along the way.
Christmas Rant #1,032,293
Something to consider when over-consuming during the holiday season, Costco and Trader Joe's pay their employees a living wage, while Wal-Mart does not.
A Good Lesson: Fake It
According to Paul Tough's new book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, the most important thing that kids learn in school is not knowledge, but how to improve character traits such as resilience, the ability to delay gratification, and diligence . . . and so the most important lesson I've taught my students is probably not one related to essay writing . . . my best guess is that the most valuable thing they will take away from my class is a policy I instituted last year, a protocol on how to approach me after being absent from my class; you may not come up to me before class and ask, "What did I miss?" because I won't remember, and even worse, you can't say, "Did I miss anything?"because then I'll make you read this wonderfully sarcastic poem . . . so what you must do is provide one piece of information about the lesson you missed, which you must acquire from a classmate, so that you can make a statement like this: "Dearest teacher, I know we read an essay about bee-keeping yesterday, and I heard that we had a quiz, so I was wondering what I should do to make this up?" and though I know the process is complete baloney, and that I am forcing the student to pretend they care about something they don't care about, I think this is an important skill to have: the ability to pretend you that care, and I am always surprised at how adept they are at it, how quickly they adapted to my demand . . . in fact, sometimes they are so convincing with their facts and queries that they actually fool me, and I truly believe that they care about what they missed.
What the F#$@ Does Dave Know About The Higgs Boson?
Though I am completely unqualified to say anything regarding physics, this hasn't deterred me at all; I have now written two pieces about the elusive Higgs Boson: the first was when I scored an exclusive interview with this rare and rather profane particle, and the second is a feature article in my friend's new magazine, which is called Lifewild Quarterly and which is billed as a "science, wildlife, and nature publication designed, written, and illustrated by folks who have no business talking about it in any professional quality"; I'll bet my high school physics teacher would be very proud of my endeavors . . . if I actually took physics in high school, which I didn't (paradoxically making me even better qualified to write for Lifewild than most of the other contributors).
Lost in the Fun Home
Alison Bechdel's autobiographical graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is by far the best existentialist illustrated Joycean tour-de-force bildungsroman about the coming of age of a artistic lesbian living in a Victorian home perfectly and obsessively restored by a closeted gay dad/ mortician who may or may not have committed suicide by stepping in front of an eighteen wheeler (truckicide?) setting off a recursive labyrinth of a narrative that ends where it begins like the Ouroboros . . . in fact, if I were a coming of age lesbian, I would be so intimidated by the artistry of this thing, that I would take up some other art form, like abstract steel sculpture or origami, instead of trying to compete with the brilliance of Bechdel's insight, allusions, and aesthetics.
Catfish Smells Fishy
I can't put my finger on exactly what it is about the documentary Catfish, but the story seems too neat, too contrived, and too perfectly captured -- every important moment is caught on film, everyone in the story bestows "documentary gold" into the hands of the filmmakers, and Vince's metaphor about the catfish keeping the cod nimble may be a parallel for Angela "schooling" the city boys . . . schooling them in a sad manner, but deceiving them for enough time to make them confused and embarrassed . . . but it may also work in the way that the film fools us . . . in the end, it doesn't matter if it's real or fake, or some odd combination of both (which is probably the truth of the matter . . . I think the creators knew there was something rotten in Ishpeming at the start, when they were "opening" the box that contained first painting) because the film isn't brilliant or all that moving, and it doesn't raise profound aesthetic questions, like its kissing cousin, My Kid Could Paint That, but I still think it's worth watching Catfish: though Nev is immature and annoying, his chest hair is something to behold.
Chucker vs. Shooter
Sometimes, when I am in an existential mood, I wonder: Am I a chucker or a shooter? but this is one of those intractable philosophical conundrums, because no one possesses the exact percentage when a shooter turns into a chucker, and -- as the old saying goes -- every chucker has his day . . . and then, however briefly, he imagines himself a shooter, until The Law of Averages exacts statistical revenge and The Scales of Justice are balanced once again.
The Gospel According to Alex
According to my eight year old son, the three wise men brought the baby Jesus "gold, Frankenstein, and myrrh."
When In Doubt, Blame It On Your Wife
I certainly have no problem blaming things on my kids that are actually my own fault, but there are times when it's much more logical to throw your wife under the bus; last week, I had to take my mini-van to the dealer to get a key transmitter -- and it's already humiliating enough for me to deal with mechanics, because while I teach kids how to write poetry, mechanics get to use powerful pneumatic tools and have extremely manly work-clothes -- but to add insult to injury, when the guy in the overalls asked for my registration and insurance card so he could take down the VIN and some other information, I couldn't find either . . . I searched the glove compartment, the cup-holders, the ashtray, and the floor . . . but no luck, and I finally told him, "My wife drives this car and I don't know what she did with everything," but that's not true, I drive the mini-van, but I had no idea where any of that stuff actually was, and (after I called my wife) what I didn't realize is that there is a second glove little glove compartment above the big glove compartment, and that's where we keep that stuff . . . and the bright side is: at least this ignorance didn't occur when I was being pulled over by a cop for a moving violation.
The Yellow Birds: Catch-22 Without the Jokes
The Yellow Birds, a novel written by Iraqi War veteran Kevin Powers, has a scene reminiscent of Catch-22: as I raced to the finish of the story, I couldn't help but think of when Yossarian shows up in formation butt-naked to receive his medal because Snowden has bled all over his uniform . . . and Powers' novel also has a Snowden-like scene of graphic gore and violence at its heart, but while Yossarian moves through a mock-epic collection of eccentric soldiers, insane officers, and colorful whores in a picaresque and often hysterically funny manner, Powers' narrator John Bartle reminds me more of a detached and lost Hemingway character, who has become unhinged by war and can no longer relate to anyone who hasn't been there . . . Catch-22 is a lot more fun, but the last eighty pages of The Yellow Birds is powerful, vivid, and memorable . . . it makes the slog through the earlier chapters well worth it.
One of the Many Wonderful Things About Knowing Whitney Even Longer Than I've Known My Wife
I recently pointed out that one of the wonderful things about being married is the verbal shorthand you have for memories -- a short and simple phrase can evoke an entire scene -- but I should also point out that I have known my friend Whitney even longer than I have been married to my wife, and Whitney's memory is nearly as prodigious an an elephant's . . . but, unlike the relatively unbiased elephant, Whitney seems to remember the things you'd most like to forget . . . so he recently reminded me of another "bringing stuff back to the table episode". . . my wife was in India with some of her lady-friends, and I met up with John, Whitney, and Mose in Amsterdam; we were catching up in a cozy tavern, sitting at a little wood table in the corner, and it was my turn to buy a round; I walked up to the bar, purchased four pints of beer, turned and saw my friends deep in conversation, and decided I didn't need any help carrying the four pints -- so I nestled them into a square, put my hands on each side of the square, applied a bit of pressure, and lifted . . . and (miraculously!) the square of four pint glasses, held together firmly, and so I proceeded across the barroom floor in this manner, happy with my independence and my aptitude, until I got several feet from the table; at this point, John, Mose, and Whitney simultaneously looked at me, and their combined facial expressions conveyed so much anxiety and disbelief, such a unified and abject lack of faith in my endeavor, that I doubted myself and slightly adjusted the pressure I was placing on the four pint glasses -- despite the fact that I had applied the perfect amount of pressure for ninety percent of the walk -- and with this slight increase in pressure, the pint glasses shattered (and so did my ego, but not my ability to create zeugma) and then I had to endure much humiliation and ridicule, despite the fact that it was their facial expressions that caused the entire mess, and then, just when I had forgotten the entire incident, I had to relive it not once, but twice: when Whitney brought it up in the comments, and when I took the time to describe it here.
Things Overheard in the Hallway
One sophomore said to another, "You're like a shrimp . . . you're a shellfish" and this was such a strange phrase that I couldn't ignore it, and so I asked the sophomore why he said it, but the reason he gave for making this odd simile was far less interesting than the phrase itself . . . so I won't ruin it and tell you his explanation.
A Fun Game (if you like loud noises)
A few weeks ago, we converted our spare change into an Amazon Gift Card, and this has led to some impulse purchases . . . the latest is a Cajon Box Drum, which is a large wooden box that doubles as a stool, and you whack it in various spots to get various tones; my family invented the Cajon Box Drum Game, in which several family members play the drum in succession and a person in another room -- who cannot see the drum and the player -- tries to guess who is beating on it . . . oddly, this was easy to do in my family; my wife didn't have much rhythm, my son Alex hits it a bit randomly, Catherine said it sounded like I was "thinking about it too much," and Ian -- the little bastard -- is a natural.
One of the Many Wonderful Things About Marriage
On our way up to Vermont this Thanksgiving, we stopped to eat at Roy Rogers, and my wife said, "Remember what happened at Roy Rogers?" and this was all she had to say, and my mind travelled twenty years into the past . . . when we were returning from a Williamsburg road trip and stopped at The Maryland House to eat; it was very crowded, so Catherine snagged a booth while I put all the fixin's on our burgers at the Fixin's Bar, and then -- while I was carrying a tray of fully fixed food across the wide open brown tiled space between the Fixin's Bar and the booth Catherine had snagged, I had what is affectionately known as a "wardrobe malfunction" . . . I was wearing a pair of shorts that I had stolen from the most notorious clothing thief in our fraternity, so I was quite proud that I had righteously filched these shorts from him and beat him at his own game, but he was thicker than me, so the shorts were loose around the waist, and they didn't have a button, so I was using a safety pin to keep them cinched . . . and the safety pin snapped . . . and the shorts fell to my knees . . . and I couldn't bend down to pull them up, because I was carrying a tray of fully fixed food . . . and at this juncture, I should point out that I didn't bring a whole lot of laundry on the road trip, and I had run out of underwear, so I was "going commando" under the shorts . . . so once they fell to my knees I was, as the English say, doing the full monty (or, as the Japanese say, "sporting wang") but luckily, the only people who saw this were my wife and a fat old black woman -- and both of them immediately burst out laughing as they watched my shuffle as fast as I could to the booth, where I put the tray down and pulled my shorts up; I learned a valuable lesson that day: if you're not going to wear underwear, make sure your shorts fit correctly and have a sturdy fastener . . . and one of the wonderful things about marriage is that it only takes a couple of words to evoke a moment like this, once you've been with someone for twenty years you have a kind of verbal shorthand to access all of these most excellent and humiliating events.
Was Dave One-Upped or One-Downed?
When I mentioned that my dog Sirius requires two bags for his morning walk, my friend Stacey -- who is taller than me, but has a much smaller dog -- one-upped me and claimed that her dog Norman fills THREE bags on his evening walk . . . and while I'm not sure if this "one-upping" or "one-downing," I loved the conversation, because instead of "humblebragging" -- an act that I detest -- we were actually bragging, which is something I love (even if the topic is the amount of fecal matter our pets produce).
Bigfoot vs. Ram Bomjon
There are two types of people:
1) people rooting for a conclusive Bigfoot encounter . . . and if you are one of these types of people, then the Provo Canyon Incident is as believable as they come
2) people who believe Ram Bomjon (the Buddha Boy) was able to meditate for months in a tree without food or water . . .
and I am sorry, but you can't have both, as to ask for both these supernatural miracles to be true would be extraordinarily greedy, so you have to choose; as for me, I am rooting hard for Team Sasquatch.
Just Living My Life, Dave-Style
As I was walking out the door on Wednesday morning, I realized that I had forgotten my cell-phone, and so I went back into the kitchen to retrieve it . . . and as I walked by the counter I noticed an overturned yogurt container, a spoon, and an open magazine-- it took me a moment to process the tableau-- and then I realized that this was my mess, that I was the culprit, and I told my wife that I couldn't believe I could be so rude and slovenly -- which made her laugh-- and the odd thing is this: I was genuinely surprised that I didn't clean up after myself, and -- before I saw the evidence-- I certainly believed that I cleaned up after myself once I was done with my breakfast; if someone interrogated me, I think -- even under the strain of torture-- that I would have insisted that I had rinsed out my yogurt container and threw it in the recycling bin, put my spoon in the dishwasher, and put my magazine away in some acceptable magazine storing location . . . yet I did none of this, and so I am starting to wonder about the ramifications of Just Living My Life, Dave-Style.
The Car: Much Faster Than A Horse
This Thanksgiving, we were able to resurrect an old tradition -- one we haven't done in a few years-- we hightailed it out of Jersey to visit our friends in Bolton Valley, Vermont . . . and, as usual, I was astounded by the amount of traffic we had to endure in order to escape New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, and I was also -- as usual -- astounded by how much the terrain, culture, and weather can change during a seven hour drive; Rob and Tammy don't live IN the mountains, they live ON the mountain -- five miles up a treacherously steep road . . . their house is even in elevation with the ski lodge . . . and so on Monday, we essentially drove from winter back to fall . . . when we left their house, it was a near blizzard, and several times we nearly slid and fishtailed to our death, but by the time we got back to Jersey, it was fifty degrees and sunny, and we were able to hit some tennis balls down at the park.
My Team Is Losing . . .
In Hanna Rosin's new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, she uses the stark contrast between how her son and how her daughter get organized for school as the anecdote that illustrates her copious statistics . . . girls are far more equipped to handle the rigors of modern education than boys, and so while her daughter makes to-do lists for tasks that lie weeks in the future, Rosin is doing everything in her power "not to become her son's secretary," and this dichotomy now continues from elementary school right through college, where women outnumber men on almost every campus and certain elite schools are practicing "affirmative action" for the boys, so that the male/female ratio doesn't get incredibly skewed (and I can already see this trend in my own house -- I have two boys-- and the rule is that "the homework isn't done until Mommy checks it" because Daddy is incompetent, overlooks things, and doesn't read directions).
Heady Topper: I Am Undecided
On our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Bolton Valley, Vermont, there was much mention of the legendary Heady Topper Imperial I.P.A -- a locally brewed and canned beer -- and everyone seemed to have an opinion on it; most folks loved it and were willing to rush over to the tiny Alchemist Cannery in order to grab a few cans before they sold out, but others were vehemently opposed to this beer that "tasted like a pine tree" and so I decided to try it for myself . . . we swung by the brewery, but they were sold out (of course) so I had to make do with a sample, and while I certainly didn't feel that it was "world class", I did like the first few gulps, but then it got a little sharp and hoppy for my taste . . . I prefer New Jersey's Hopfish IPA . . . which is ALWAYS available at Pino's in Highland Park, and so though it doesn't have the legendary allure of the beer that is impossible to buy (the demand for Heady Topper is so great that it costs $3 for one can and $72 for a case, there's no price break for bulk buying) I like the fact that I don't have to plan my day around an alcohol purchase . . . which seems like a pathetic pursuit for grown man with a wife and two children.
Hurray For Zman! Hurray for Man!
It's a good thing Sentence of Dave super-commenter Zman recommended that I read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's utopian feminist novel Herland, because otherwise when Hanna Rosin asked the question "What does the modern-day Herland look like?" in her new book The End of Men and the Rise of Women, I would not have understood the allusion, and I would have felt like one of the men she was describing: disempowered, penurious, and uneducated . . . I would have felt like a man in one of the 1,997 metropolitan regions of the country that James Chung studied (out of 2000) where young women had a higher median income than young men (and if you want more statistics like that, read the book, as it is chock full of them).
There are Two Types of People
No matter how stupid the idea is, I love it when an essay start with the premise "there are two types of people" and so I will follow suit; there are two types of people:
1) people who talk during movies
2) people who don't . . .
and I am number one all the way: movies are MUCH more interesting when accompanied by my insightful commentary.
Five Years Of Sentence of Dave!
I have been writing this blog for so long, that I can't really remember much that happened before its inception (I refer to these events as pre-Sentence of Dave) and along the way I have evolved my style from its simple and clutter free roots to my current prolix bombasticity . . . my syntax has gone from grammatically correct to convoluted elliptical absurdity, and my diction -- which was once precise -- now often includes superfluous lexical garbage, such as repeated usage of the word ersatz and repeated misusage of the word miracle . . . and all this time, my dedicated fans have stuck with me, and so I would like to offer my sincerest thanks . . . I hope I can wring five more years of material out of the theme "Dave" . . . more fragmented logic and half-baked ideas, more awkward moments, more useless opinionated capsule reviews . . . I'd like to thank all the guys at Gheorghe:The Blog for inspiring this "spin-off" and especially Zman for his diligent and persistent commenting over here; and I'd like to thank my wife, children, and colleagues, both for providing material and for pointing out when I have done something really stupid, which is always the best content of all.
One Man, Two Bags . . .
My dog has gone from being a one bagger to a two bagger, and while this is a good thing in a baseball game, it's NOT such a good thing during his 5:30 AM consitutional . . . if my stomach wasn't empty, that second load would certainly cause an early morning upchuck.
Happy Thanksgiving
For the greatest Thanksgiving monologue in cinematic history, you need to watch Pieces of April and learn why Eddie has changed his name to Tyrone (I can't find the clip on YouTube) but it's a great movie -- simple, elegant plot and an excellent ensemble cast.
First World Problems
Now that our power is back, I am happy to say that the worst problem in our house is a universal one -- and though I didn't flush the toilet with malicious intent Monday evening, I was quite pleased to hear my seven-year old son Ian, who was in the shower, use the proper tone -- the tone his Dad taught him --when he screamed, "WHO'S USING THE WATER?"
The Nerds No Longer Need to Get Revenge
I asked my son Alex what he was doing on the playground with his friends, and he told me -- without any shame-- that they were playing a game they invented called "Dalek tag," which had a number of rules, all revolving around references to Dr. Who . . . my boys love the new version of the show and so do a few of their friends, but the rest of the kids had never seen it, yet they were still willing to join in . . . this is a big change from when I was a kid-- back then, if you made up a game based on campy sci-fi television, then you didn't advertise this to the entire playground (unless you wanted a serious beat-down).
Weekend of Dave!
Catherine and I attended two parties over the weekend . . . Friday night was the Third Annual Scary Story Contest and Saturday night was a Beer Pong Birthday Party -- and I won Best Story at the Story Contest and at the Beer Pong Party, I held the table for several hours with my silent and stoic partner Bob, who was prone to diving on the floor for difficult shots, and then when we were finally unseated, my wife and I returned and held the table until the party ended . . . so quantifiably, this was pretty much the most successful weekend of my life, as it was rather easy to measure how well I did at each party . . . I wish all of life was so concrete and simple, with transparent rules and immediate gratification, but now it's back to the confusing, ambiguous daily grind of life, where there is no apparent way to keep score and no easy way to figure out if you are holding the table or winning the contest . . . by the way, would anyone like to play darts with me at the Park Pub on Thursday?
Did Dave Defend His Title?
There was a big crowd this year for Liz and Eric's Third Annual Scary Story Contest, and I was feeling some anxiety because I wanted to defend my crown . . . last year, I lucked out because two excellent stories were read back-to-back and, coincidentally, these two excellent stories were very similar in plot -- so I think they cancelled each other out, and so I was able to take the cash with this gross and silly tale ; this year the stories were all varied and all excellent . . . the theme was "it's the end of the world . . . as we know it" . . . and I was buried at number three in the order, so I didn't think I had a shot to win, but, miraculously, I pulled it out . . . most likely because I got a very good reading from my colleague Adam (and sadly, I repaid him the favor by kind of butchering his story, which he wrote in the dialect of what he described as "an elderly black man" but my interpretation sounded more like Benjy Compson from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury . . . oops!) and so I won Best Story and took home the big cash prize -- and this despite the fact that my voice was easily recognized, the anonymous reading made no difference . . . on one of my ballots it said, "This is so Dave, I hate you Dave, and I hope you don't win again" . . . but the person still felt compelled to vote for my very silly story . . . and I am quite proud of the fact that I even garnered a few votes for The Scariest Story (no mean feat for a guy who is extremely skeptical of spooky stuff) and at the end of the night, as a bonus (someone called it "dessert") I read aloud my eight year old son Alex's story-- he wanted to enter the contest and win some money and so he dictated a story to me minutes before we left for Liz and Eric's house -- I think the babysitter thought the whole family was batshit crazy -- and, coincidentally, his story is quite similar to mine, which says something about my depth and sophistication as a writer . . . you can read both stories over here at Gheorghe: The Blog -- and thanks again to Eric and Liz for a fantastic party, and for all the writers, readers and attendees . . . definitely my favorite party of the year, and if you can ever attend, I recommend it: we sit in their spooky wood panelled basement in the dark, sip beverages, and listen to the stories -- and this low-tech fun is entertainment enough -- but then when you add the gambling to the mix, it makes for a truly memorable evening.
Hot Things and Stupid Decisions
Last Wednesday afternoon, my son Ian walked into the small bathroom off our living room,yelled "It's so hot in here!" and then ran out; I went to confirm this and he was right, it was so hot that you could feel the warmth radiating off the sink and toilet porcelain . . . and then I noticed that knob for the baseboard heater was turned up all the way . . . someone had turned the knob ALL the way up and this person must have done it in the morning and then closed the door to the bathroom, so the electric element had all day to roast the room-- and it certainly wasn't Ian, unless he was a very good actor and feigned his surprise at how hot the room was -- so I called over my other son, Alex, and showed him his handiwork, and he said, "I didn't know what it did!" and I said, "Then why did you touch it? Don't you remember when you shut off the furnace?" and though I was incensed for a moment, my anger subsided pretty quickly, because I remembered that several weeks ago, when my wife went away on a Ladies Weekend, I came down to the kitchen one morning and found that an area of our counter was extremely hot to the touch and then I noticed that the seltzer bottles and the coffee maker were also quite warm and this was because I left the toaster on all night (and so I implored my wife to let me get a digital toaster, because I have problems with the analog knob on the one we have, but she was having none of it -- she told me to learn how to use the knob, and I will have to give the same advice to my son Alex . . . and this raises an extremely deep philosophical question: if you are a knob, can you learn how to properly use one?
The Road in the Sky
Peter Heller's new novel The Dog Stars returns to a postapocalyptic world similar to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but this story is a tenth of a percent more fun than The Road, if only because Hig has a loyal dog named Jasper and loyal -- although grouchy and obsessively paranoid-- friend named Bangley, and Hig has infinitely more possibilities than the unamed father and son in The Road . . . though his world and his emotions are limited by the end of all things, he still has his plane to fly and new places and people to discover, even if the places are desolate and people are ruined . . . my favorite scenes are those of him flying, they are detailed and could only be written by somone as actually versed in adventure as the author, Peter Heller, who is a writer for Outside, National Geographic, and Men's Journal.
It's A Miracle That I Convinced SomeoneTo Marry Me
Right now in my English class we are the "Process Analysis" unit, which is a fancy way to describe a "How To" essay -- and so I made the kids get up in front of the class and describe some simple but interesting process to the class . . . how to hit a forehand, how to tie a slipknot, how to do a pirouette, etc. -- and I told them I wanted them to try this informal teaching activity so that they didn't end up like me . . . back when I was in graduate school, I applied to teach for The Princeton Review -- they were paying seventeen dollars an hour back in 1993 -- and I aced the SAT practice test and made it to the second stage of the interview, where you had to teach a group of people some simple process of your choice . . . I suppose they wanted to see how well you could give instructions and interact with a crowd . . . and the folks before me taught simple lessons on "how to cure the hiccups" and "how to draw Mickey Mouse" and then I got up in front of the room and taught people about "the evolution of the wing," a topic that always fascinated me . . . because half a wing doesn't seem to confer much of an evolutionary advantage to an animal, but an entire wing opens up entirely new vistas for a species to thrive in . . . and there are several theories on how this came to be -- one involving heat-regulation -- and, needless to say, this turned into a typical Awkward Moment of Dave . . . the room fell silent, in awe of my pathetic geekiness and my complete misinterpretation of the assignment, the audience, and what other human beings like to learn about . . . and (also needless to say) I did NOT get the job.
Good Thing This Belt Wasn't a Bunny Rabbit
My black leather belt got stuck in one of the loops of my blue jeans, which really annoyed me, and so I gave it a Lenny-esque yank and ripped it in half.
Little Nozzle Hides Out in My Kitchen For Three Years!
Three years ago, we completely remodelled our kitchen, and there are still some features that I haven't utilized . . . because I haven't noticed them yet; one such feature is a little silver nozzle on a hose that lives on our sink: you can pull it out and spray water at something from close range . . . and if I didn't see my wife using it the other day, I probably would have gone to my grave without noticing it.
The Sandy Seven
The "freshman fifteen" has been debunked, but I can attest that the "Sandy Seven" is real . . . I'm wearing it around my middle -- I attribute the weight gain to the concurrence of several unavoidable events 1) I had to finish all the food in my refrigerator before it spoiled 2) living in darkness results in alcohol abuse, laziness, and over-sleeping 3) once a few people in town got power back, it caused a chain reaction of dinner invitations, and so, as a direct consequence, more gluttony and alcohol abuse 4) once we got our power back, it was reason for celebration, which, of course, involved over-indulging in every way possible 5) the post-traumatic wind-down from the stress of Hurricane Sandy involved even more drinking and bingeing on Halloween candy (and if you could pro-rate Sandy's weight gain over an entire year, you'd be talking about the Freshman 180).
A Cinematic Analogy Both Succeeds and Fails in the Same Moment
I liked The Brothers Bloom, but I didn't love it -- it is definitely a film with more style than substance, which also describes the brothers themselves, who are extremely adept con-artists; we tour Eastern Europe with them, and the scenes are shot beautifully, but they happen so quickly that they actually lack drama . . . and for me to say something moves too fast means it must really be moving fast, because I don't have much of an attention span for slow films (Stalker almost killed me) but there is one thing I did love about the movie: Stephen's running gag -- when he meets someone, he always asks them to think of a card, and then he whips out his deck, cuts it, and presents the person with what should ostensibly be the card -- but it never is, he's not telepathic and he's always wrong, and so his brother asks him why he constantly repeats this pathetic failure of a trick, and Stephen says, "If I do it enough, someday it's going to work on someone, and then it will be the best damn card trick in the world" . . . I love this statistical approach to magic; I use the same method when I see an old student: I always take a guess at their name -- whether I am confident about this fact or not -- and while I often miss the mark, when I do get it right, they are always impressed . . . the other day in the library, I recognized a "kid" that I taught long ago . . . I recognized him despite the fact that he was a good thirty pounds heavier than when I taught him, and was also sporting a beard, and so I took a shot at his name and said,"Sebastian?" I said, and he turned his head and smiled, impressed that I remembered his name; it turns out that he's now thirty years old, which is wild in its own way, but when I explained my philosophy on guessing names and my analogy to The Brothers Bloom, I think I totally confused him . . . and, of course, I was breaking a cardinal rule of magic: a good magician should never reveal his tricks.
This Land Is Herland, This Land Is Your Land . . . and You Can Have It
Recently, my colleagues and I have been speculating as to what the world would be like if women were in charge, and I lamented that no great sci-fi book or movie has explored this topic; a friend suggested that I read Herland, a utopian novel from 1915 written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman . . . and so I did: three male adventurers discover an isolated land where a group of women have created a civilization without the influence of men -- their last contact with men was thousands of years earlier -- and now these women reproduce by parthenogenesis, or asexual reproduction -- virgin birth -- and they don't seem to have any sexual desires or miss fornicating with men . . . and sorry Cliff Clavin, these ladies do NOT "hail from the Isle of Lesbos," all their sensual emotion is directed toward the exaltation of motherhood . . . and religion, society, education, economics, science, and all other fields spring from this motherly philosophy, which has nothing to do with coddling children and everything to do with raising them . . . and if you're not good enough to raise a child, the village takes the child away from you . . . and if you're not good enough to have a child, then you are required to not bear young . . . and while this world is peaceful, logical, educated, practical, rational, and successful, it is also rather boring, especially the drama of Herland, which lacks conflict and originality, and art in general -- which seems conspicuously absent -- and the complete void of competition, whether in sports, business, or society . . . Gilman shows her lack of understanding of men when the three adventurers "marry" three women of Herland . . . as two of the three men are able to adapt rather easily to the fact that their mates are more like sisters than lovers, and have no sexual desires, only a yearning to reproduce sexually and become venerated as mothers of a new stock . . . I don't think most men are advanced enough to shed their sexual instincts; the third man, Terry, tries to rape his bride, and he is banished from Herland, and here Gilman shows at least some understanding of the male anatomy, as when Terry attempted to have his way with Alima, she kicked him in the nuts in order to subdue him . . . as a novel the book is rather boring, but as a window into how a fin de siecle feminist imagined a perfect society, it's very revealing . . . and it seems Charlotte Perkins Gilman is in agreement with my wife as far as a "final solution" for men.
"How Music Works" Explains How Music Works
David Byrne's new book How Music Works is impressive on many levels: the book itself is a work of art -- it has a black and white minimalist cover (which is slightly mushy to the touch) but inside there are all sorts of color visuals: photos and lyric sheets and pie charts and medieval sketches -- and Byrne covers it all . . . how context affects music; a history of CBGB's; the recording methods of The Talking Heads; a precise breakdown of how much money he made on his last two albums, with pie charts and all expenses and profits laid out for the curious reader; a tutorial on what elements are necessary to create a music "scene"; plenty of music theory and philosophy; some art history; a quick history of recorded sound, from Edison to MP3's . . . and his writing is clever, precise, and clutter-free . . . plus he got me to start listening to King Tubby . . . ten burning houses out of ten.
A Blogging Miracle!
Yesterday, my editor over at Gheorghe: The Blog commanded me to write something -- and I suppose he had a right to do this, since my school was closed for the ninth day in a row and I was home all alone . . . and so I prepared by taking a two hour nap and then I sat down and wrote a post about The Three Types of People You Meet During Hurricane Sandy . . . and then I checked in here at Sentence of Dave and I found this comment from the prodigious commenting machine known as Zman . . . a bona fide blogging miracle! . . . while I was categorizing all humans into three classifications, Zman had done me one better and divided humanity into a mere TWO groups . . . and he did it on my home turf -- and beat me to the punch by several hours -- while I was completely unaware, obliviously posting my thesis over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . and if this doesn't qualify as a genuine blogging miracle, then I will live on a pillar for the rest of my life . . . like this guy.
Bonus! Dave Categorizes All Humans!
If you're like me, then you like when people simplify things enormously . . . so head on over to Gheorghe: The Blog, where I use my incisive observational powers to explain The Three Types of People You Meet During Hurricane Sandy . . . perhaps you are one of them.
There Are Job Openings in Oooguruk!
I highly recommend Jeanne Marie Laskas' new book Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make the Country Work, and my favorite facts from the book are:
1) that Cincinnati Bengals cheerleaders -- who must attend two grueling practices a week, and must "make weight" at each practice weigh-in if they want to make the squad that will be on the field that week -- get paid a paltry seventy-five dollars per game;
2) there are ten polar bear cages placed around the Pioneer Natural Resources Oil Rig on Oooguruk Island, which is just off the shore of Alaska's North Slope . . . but the cages aren't for the polar bears . . . they're for the people working at the camp :if you see a polar bear, you ring the alarm and then scurry into a cage and lock yourself inside so you don't get eaten;
and my favorite opinion in the book comes courtesy of Joe Haworth, who works at Puente Hills Material Recovery Facility and Landfill; he said, "Look, environmental consciousness is not a religious thing . . . it doesn't have holy precepts that say you can't touch a plastic bag or you're a horrible person; it's more: get a grip and find a balance . . . life's organic, it's smelly and gooey . . . get past it, it's just science; I think as we get more people reconnected to science through recycling, we get them to understand the magic of this planet . . . they've forgotten the magic, and the truth is, it doesn't take that much connecting to go WOW! . . . it' like lying on your back in the mountains, looking at the stars . . . being able to go WOW! and holy mackerel! . . . it really doesn't take a lot of study to appreciate this place."
Dave Feeds Hurricane Refugee!
In the days after the hurricane, the lines were long at the grocery store, as most people didn't have power and could only buy a little bit of food at a time . . . and so when the woman in front of me started to panic because her credit card wouldn't swipe, I stepped forward and saved the day . . . I said: "Why don't you put your card in a plastic bag and then swipe it?" and both her and the cashier nodded their heads -- they had heard of this technique, but I am assuming that because they were so traumatized by Sandy that neither of them thought of the "bag method" . . . otherwise known as the Aiken biphase modulation scheme -- and so the cashier gave the desperate woman a grocery bag, and she encased her card in the grocery bag and then swiped it and BAM! . . . credit was granted and there was much rejoicing; when the woman thanked me, I humbly said, "No problem," but, of course, everyone in that grocery store knew that they were in the presence of a true hero.
Meet The Neighbors . . . Yikes.
Hurricane Sandy inspired much communal sentiment in our neighborhood -- we live in a small town and so we are already friendly with the majority of our neighbors -- but folks really came out of their shell in the aftermath of the hurricane . . . and so when I rounded the corner with my dog and walked past the grouchy old man's house with the immaculate lawn and giant RV, I wasn't particularly surprised when he walked out of his garage and spoke to me -- though he had never gave me the time of day before this -- and I took him up on his offer to "give my dog a biscuit," which he pulled out of a bin in his incredibly crowded but organized garage, which was full of ham radio equipment, tools, and miscellaneous unidentifiable clutter; it turns out that he is a Lab lover and recognized that my dog was part Lab, and so these biscuits in his garage were reserved only for folks with a Lab (he had no dog of his own, and in retrospect, this strikes me as odd that he had a large container of MilkBones at the ready) and then he lured us into his backyard -- he said, "You want to see something?" and, of course I did, and he showed us a raccoon he had recently trapped, which was in a cage and had one weirdly cataracted blue eye and he said as soon as gas was available, that he was going to drive the raccoon out into the country and release him, and then he told me that he had trapped "at least five hundred possum" over the years and that he had taken on a mission to "keep the borough clean," and that meant trapping squirrels, possum, skunks, raccoons, and other wildlife and then driving this captured wildlife far away -- even to different states! -- in his RV and releasing the wildlife back into the wild . . . and about this time I was beginning to feel like that raccoon in the cage, and I was wondering if the old man was going to trap me and drive me far away in his RV, but while we were talking the power, which had returned for twenty minutes, went out again, and so we had to talk about that, and then he started confiding in me about his neighbors, who were maliciously channeling their gutter spigots at his property, in order to wash away his yard, and then he showed me the retaining wall he was building to thwart their evil plan, and then-- finally!-- I was able to make my escape . . . and I'll be glad when this catastrophe is over and people go back to their normal, misanthropic ways.
Seven Reasons a Snow Day is Better Than a Hurricane Day
1) You can't sled on wet leaves;
2) you can't make a rain-man (unless you're Dustin Hoffman);
3) kids are tempted to swing Tarzan-style on downed power lines;
4) you have to walk the dog;
5) drinking hot cocoa is more fun than trying to consume all the seafood in the freezer before it defrosts;
6) it's embarrassing when a giant limb from your tree falls on your neighbor's house;
7) no power means no TV which means your children will eventually suffer a head injury (seriously . . . and now not only does Ian have a giant lump on his head -- Alex slammed a door into it -- but he also scraped all the skin off his Achilles tendon when he stepped into a hole that was obscured by leaves and contained a very sharp drain culvert . . . school needs to reopen!)
2) you can't make a rain-man (unless you're Dustin Hoffman);
3) kids are tempted to swing Tarzan-style on downed power lines;
4) you have to walk the dog;
5) drinking hot cocoa is more fun than trying to consume all the seafood in the freezer before it defrosts;
6) it's embarrassing when a giant limb from your tree falls on your neighbor's house;
7) no power means no TV which means your children will eventually suffer a head injury (seriously . . . and now not only does Ian have a giant lump on his head -- Alex slammed a door into it -- but he also scraped all the skin off his Achilles tendon when he stepped into a hole that was obscured by leaves and contained a very sharp drain culvert . . . school needs to reopen!)
Hurricane Sandy Zeugma
Hurricane Sandy survivors in my neighborhood have decided that the best coping mechanism for a cold dark powerless house is to find someone with electricity and drink all their cold beer . . . so Hurricane Sandy has not only severely damaged New Jersey's infrastructure, but it has also severely damaged our livers.
I Hate When People Say This
Anyone who says they like every kind of music doesn't like any kind of music.
Blueberries grow in Maine, but where do Boo Berries grow?
Chapter Two of Jeanne Marie Laskas' new book Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make the Country Work describes how migrant workers "rake" wild blueberries in Maine . . . this is the jackpot of migrant piece-work: a good raker can fill one hundred boxes on a good day, and at $2.25 a box, that adds up to over $1300 dolars in a week -- far more than a migrant can earn picking peaches in Georgia, or oranges in Florida, more than gathering mushrooms in Pennsylvania, or tomatoes in New Jersey -- so the migrant in the "East coast stream" dutifully picks those other crops, but Maine is the prize at the end of the rainbow . . . and the odd thing is, in the area of Northern Maine where the picking happens, the unemployment rate is 12%, yet no natives pick . . . they used to pick, it was a communal, agrarian thing, but now the work is considered too hard, and though the money is good, it is left to the migrants -- who are supposed to be documented . . . but it's rather easy to fake documentation, as one said, "E-Verify is a joke," and so the increased security on our border -- the beefed up border patrol and federal agents -- actually has a paradoxical effect: it keeps migrants in America longer, because they are afraid to go home and visit, for fear that they won't be able to get back to work in America, or that it will be too costly to sneak across the border . . . so this often homeless underground of migrant workers that provide us with such cheap produce are trapped here, making pretty good money and wiring much of it home to Mexico or Peru or wherever . . . Eric Sclosser details the West coast version of this "shadow economy" in his book Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market and it's the same situation, strawberry picking is good cash, but no white folk ever last more than a day at it . . . and the thrust of all this is that I really shouldn't complain about the seventy descriptive essays I have to grade (but maybe if I got paid by the piece, I would work harder and faster at it).
F*&king Failure and F*%king Triumph
I was very angry Saturday morning -- I tried to do some music recording, but my MIDI keyboard was creating some kind of massive feedback loop in my Sonar X1 digital recording software, and so I tried to look up how to fix it, but all I ended up doing was swearing a lot . . . and so I tried to fix my son's ceiling fan -- he decided to swing from his bed on the light fixture's pull chain and ripped it out of the switch and broke the fixture, but the replacement fixture did not fit into the fan . . . so I brought the broken fixture to Home Depot and a nice dude helped me, he actually went and got a screwdriver and took apart my fixture and showed me how to insert the new porcelain light mount into the old metal fixture (my favorite part of the the tutorial is when I asked if I needed to change the wires to the pull switch and he said, "You don't need to fuck with those, they're fine as they are," and so I followed his instructions and didn't fuck with them and he was right, they were fine) and, thanks to his help, I was able to fix the light (I was never so excited as on my trip up the stairs, after flicking the fuse back into place in the basement, when I thought I noticed extra light coming from my son's room . . . I was actually scared to get to the top of the stairs and find that I might have failed, but my instincts were right, it was extra light . . . f#%*ing triumph!) and then, perhaps inspired by my first mechanical victory, I realized that perhaps it was my drum tracks, which were routed through the MIDI Omni port, that were bleeding into the the other tracks and creating the crazy noise loop, and my instinct was once again correct, and I fixed that as well . . . and you might consider this miraculous, that I fixed two things in one day, but it wasn't higher powers at work; it was all me . . . I was skillful, adept, and persistent, and I'm pretty sure this will never, ever happen in my life again.
Ask a Stupid Question, Get a Stupid Answer
You'd think the question "What color is the inside of a coal mine?" wouldn't need asking, but -- according to Jeanne Marie Laskas in her new book Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make the Country Work -- the inside of a coal mine is bright white (when you're shining your torch, of course . . . which you should never shine in another miner's eyes) because coal dust is highly explosive, especially when mixed with methane gas -- which naturally leaks from excavations deep beneath the earth -- and so the coal face needs to be coated with crushed limestone, which is the opposite color of coal and gives the mine a much more cheerful appearance than if it were all dark black . . . but this belies the fact that every time you go down there, you are taking your life into your hands . . . a fact that the miners deal with in a cavalier fashion, like the tone of that Jim Carroll song "People Who Died."
Dave Resolves His New Year's Resolution!
Until last Thursday night, I was performing quite poorly on my quest to "Care More About Canada," but then, in an amazing turn of events, I scored hundreds of thousands of Canada points in one long evening at the Park Pub, because we played a game that you might call "What is the Canadian Analogue For That American City?" or even "What is the American Analogue for that Canadian City?" and while I can hardly remember all the analogous pairs we determined, I do remember that when our friend Adrian walked into the pub -- a bit late -- everyone yelled this question at him: "WHAT IS THE AMERICAN EQUIVALENT OF MONTREAL?" and he said, "New Orleans?" and we all screamed "YES! HE GOT IT!" and then we found out that one of the regulars is actually Canadian, and we tried to check our answers with him -- Calgary and Dallas; Quebec City and St. Augustine; San Francisco and Vancouver; Toronto and Washington DC; Saint- Louis du Ha! Ha! and Hohokus; etcetera -- but he was having none of that because Canadians don't play those sort of silly American games . . . and the rest of the night was centered around discussions of Canadian comedy, Canadian bands (and some BAD Canadian music was played on the jukebox: Barenaked Ladies and Loverboy) and Canadian and Ukrainian geography (Roman always manages to sneak some information on the Ukraine into whatever topic we're discussing) but despite this dramatic comeback in my quest to "Care More About Canada," I'm not trying anything this difficult next year . . . instead I think I'm going to eat more pizza.
To Pep Or Not To Pep?
Last Friday was the Fall Pep Rally, and the football coach was the MC and he was amped -- he wore a school football uniform, with half his face painted green and the other half painted white, and had a hoodie undershirt so that his already unrecognizable (and quite scary) face was also obscured by a hood that protruded from his green and white jersey -- and not only did he appear psychotic, but he was also yelling into the microphone at an ear-shattering volume . . . so I was happy when, after a deafening: "AND HERE'S THE BOYS SOCCER TEAM, THAT HAS A STATE GAME ON MONDAY!" that he handed the microphone to my friend Terry -- the varsity soccer coach -- because Terry took the pep down a few million notches; he said, calmly "We play Sayreville on Monday . . . unless it rains too much and the game is cancelled," and then he announced the names of his players . . . and then there was more screaming and yelling from the football coach, until the girls varsity soccer coach was handed the microphone -- my friend Kevin -- and he made a rather eloquent and heartfelt speech about the dedication of the athletes on his team, but this was way too long and coherent for a pep rally and I think most of the kids lost focus . . . so it looks like coaching soccer and teaching English is a good match, but coaching soccer and teaching English and having a lot of pep might be impossible (and, of course, Terry was right about the rain).
Of Urine and Tupperware
We had to bring the boys to the doctor for a well-visit and flu shots, and the office requested urine samples, and so we dutifully had the boys pee into a couple of plastic containers . . . a couple of decent reusable plastic containers . . . but I didn't ask for them back and they didn't offer to return them . . . but I would have taken them back and washed them and used them again, though my wife wasn't too keen on doing that.
Dog Anti-Humor
If I were more inclined to juvenile humor, I would call the act of walking our dog in the morning and picking up his excrement "Dog Duty," but I really don't care for that sort of puerile, scatological humor . . . so I don't call it that.
Like Father, Like Dog?
Dear Abby . . .
I have no genetic stake in my dog Sirius, nor did I have anything to do with his breeding -- we adopted him -- yet I take great pride in how fast he can run, how athletic and acrobatic he is, and how well he races alongside my mountain bike . . . in fact, I often brag about him to the other "parents" at the dog park . . . and so I am wondering: am I insane?
Signed,
Proud Father to an Extremely Hirsute Four-legged Boy.
I have no genetic stake in my dog Sirius, nor did I have anything to do with his breeding -- we adopted him -- yet I take great pride in how fast he can run, how athletic and acrobatic he is, and how well he races alongside my mountain bike . . . in fact, I often brag about him to the other "parents" at the dog park . . . and so I am wondering: am I insane?
Signed,
Proud Father to an Extremely Hirsute Four-legged Boy.
Use Your Illusions
I wanted to make a good impression during parent/ teacher conferences, so I cleaned my desk -- but I deliberately left my Merchant of Venice DVD out in a conspicuous location because I thought it was a good intellectual prop . . . perhaps a parent would inquire about it and I could explain that I teach the Shakespeare class -- which sounds pretty impressive -- or at the very least, they would notice it and think that something intellectual was happening in my classroom; on the other hand, I made a point to put away the other video which was lying on my desk in plain sight, a battered VHS tape of Godzilla vs. Mothra . . . I like to show "the death of mothra" as an epic contrast to the subtextually symbolic Virginia Woolf essay "Death of a Moth," which was published posthumously and is essentially a suicide note . . . we watch the first minutes of the movie The Hours, which shows Woolf's suicide by drowning and talk about the tone of that act, and then we categorize "moth" essays -- which are introspective and emotional -- and then the mood really needs to be lightened, and so so we go over "mothra" essays, which simply recount an epic event, such as when Godzilla defeated "the mighty thing" that the tiny twins from the wood box summoned . . . but there's no way I was explaining that to an adult . . . and even if I did, it still might not justify why I show a Japanese man in a rubber lizard suit fighting a giant moth marionette in an honors composition class.
Awkward Dave is on an Awkward Roll . . .
Terry, Mike and I were having a literary discussion in the English office about The Catcher in the Rye, and I said that one of the lessons that Holden has to learn in the novel is that things can't stay the same forever-- Holden wants to catch all the children running in the rye and save them from falling over the cliff of adulthood, which he equates with corruption . . . he wants put everything in a museum -- behind glass-- and, of course, this just isn't possible . . . he struggles most about his sister growing up, that she might eventually have sexual desires like Sunny the prostitute and he's also crushed that Jane Gallagher -- the pure and innocent girl that he platonically loves -- also has sexual desires and goes on a date with the studly Stradlater . . . and it was just the guys in the office and so I expressed this idea very succinctly . . . I said: "Holden has to learn that girls want to get out there and bang people too!" and -- Murphy' Law -- just as I said this the student teacher -- who is young and sweet and female -- walked into the room, and gave me an odd look, and so instead of just letting the comment hang there . . . which was awkward enough, I made the situation even more awkward by turning to her and saying, "Right?" and so now I had put her on the spot and she had to reply to this stupidity, and so she said "Right" in a not-so-sincere manner and then rushed out of the office . . . and then Terry described with great relish how incredibly awkward I made the scene, and I guess that is because he is a big fan of Awkward Dave.
Dave Is Awkward on a Bus!
Back by popular demand, the recurring feature you never thought would recur again, has, of course, recurred again . . . it's time for yet another Awkward Moment of Dave -- this time the setting is a school bus, on a rainy day . . . and both the 8th grade boys soccer team and the 8th grade girls soccer team have been stuffed onto this bus (because our home field flooded) and it's now 6:00 PM and I've been with this screaming horde of pubescent maniacs for over three hours and there's not a seat to spare on the bus . . . I'm squashed between several kids and a pile of equipment and the girl's coach is up in the front of the bus trying to help the bus driver navigate home, so I don't even have an adult near me to commiserate with; the kid next to me is screaming in my ear -- high pitched, shrill screaming because his voice hasn't changed yet -- he is trying to convey some sort of primitive message to the girls team, and I ask him to stop once, then twice, and then I finally snap and tell him: "You're not allowed to yell until your voice changes -- it's so high pitched that it's breaking my eardrums" and this frank statement got him to stop yelling in my ear, but it also brought him to tears -- and so I learned that 8th grade boys can be very sensitive about their feminine, screechy voices . . . the kid in front of him tried to console him, he said, in a high pitched voice: "My voice is high too, and I know it" but it didn't help, the kid that I insulted, who was sitting extremely close to me, (making this an especially Awkward Moment of Dave) was despondent -- head down, holding back the waterworks -- and though I tried to apologize, it was an exercise in futility, and when I talked to him after we got off the bus -- and this was a chore, he was so pissed at me that he didn't even want to hear my apology -- I realized that he was so upset because there were girls present -- and he thought they heard my comment (though I doubt they did, the bus was extraordinarily loud) -- and I am sure this kid will forever think of me in the same way George Costanza thought of his mean and grouchy gym teacher, Mr. Heyman, who always pronounced George's surname "Can't stand ya!"
What Do Francis Ford Coppola, My Dog and I Have In Common?
I love the smell of dog poop in the morning . . . and I'm pretty sure my dog loves the smell of dog poop any time at all; my dog and I also love the documentary Hearts of Darkness . . . he loves it because of the behind-the-scenes look at puppy-sampan scene, where a boatload of Vietnamese civilians get slaughtered, but the puppy survives, and I love it because I can see myself in the hyper-driven genius auteur Francis Ford Coppola; the parallels between Coppola and me are fairly obvious, but I'll point them out for you anyway: just as Coppola completed his great but flawed film Apocalypse Now despite weather, creative problems, and a drug-addled staff -- just as he illustrated that at the hearts of all men, no matter how civilized, there is a dark jungle creature . . . in the same manner, against all odds, in all sorts of weather -- even rain!-- I pick up my dog's poop -- and though my attempt to scoop all the poop is usually flawed and futile, as you can never get all of it into the bag, some always returns into the earth from which it came -- I still try to capture it as best I can, I try to remain civilized and keep the heart of darkness at bay and I do this rain or shine, wide-eyed or hungover, in darkness and in light, taking some stab at civility, but knowing I am one step away from a shit-stained sneaker.
Uncertainty About Uncertainty
The lesson I took away from Nate Silver's excellent book The Signal and the Noise is one that Donald Rumsfeld pointed out during the war in Iraq: "there are also unknown unknowns -- there are things we do not know we don't know," and Silver -- who believes this -- interviewed Rumsfeld for the book . . . though that chapter is rather anti-climactic, the rest of the book is comprehensive, entertaining, logical, and enlightening; Silver believes that the science and math behind forecasting is improving, and that our predictions are improving as well -- but the way we frame and use these predictions is growing more political, polarized, and manipulative . . . and so we need to realize with all statistics and predictions: political polls, numbers about the economy, the weather, sports, etcetera, that these numbers are simply a stab -- not a stab in the dark -- but a stab with a particular likelihood of hitting the target and eviscerating the truth from it and a particular likelihood of missing the target completely . . . and if you can think that way, you should become a scientist, and if you can't, then you should become a politician.
If an Alien Watched the Debate (an alien from space, not an illegal alien)
If an alien from space watched Tuesday night's presidential debate, she would think we live in a dictatorship, and not a government like this.
You Can Get Away With Bad Acting in the Dark
At work recently, we have been speculating on an alternate reality . . . a world where females are not only in power . . . unequivocally in power . . . but also have been in power for a long, long time -- we have been wondering how culture, architecture, religion, laws, warfare, sex, art, and the media would reflect this change . . . it's a difficult and very hypothetical question (and I started the discussion because I was lamenting the fact that there is no great sci-fi movie or book on this subject) and while we haven't come to any definitive conclusions, it is a great conversation starter . . . so I asked my wife what she thought the world would be like if women had been in the political, economic, and cultural driver's seat for a very long time, and she said the question was almost unfathomable, and she would have to think about it, and so I took the dog for a walk while she cleaned up dinner (typical gender roles!) and he defecated on someone's lawn around the block, so I pulled the little poop-baggy from my pocket, but -- try as I might -- I couldn't get the mouth of the bag open, and it was dark and rainy, and no matter how much I rubbed my fingers together with the bag between them, no matter how much I picked at the plastic -- I couldn't pull apart that opening . . . and so I finally made an executive decision and gave up . . . and so I pretended to pick up my dog's turds with the malfunctioning poop-bag -- which wasn't really a bag . . . it was a two dimensional square of plastic -- and once I had pretended to pick up the poop, then I picked up the bag and pretended to hold it as if it contained poop; once I got a block away, I checked to make sure no one was following me, and then put the bag back into my pocket; when I got home, I told my wife what happened (and as I told her the story, of course I got the defective bag to open right up -- and so I looked like a complete idiot) and my anecdote must have triggered an epiphany in my wife's brain, because she suddenly had the answer to my earlier question: she said, "You know, if women were actually in power, they would get rid of all the men and become lesbians, because of behavior like this."
Fishing For Anything
Last week at the dentist, I had to endure a full ninety minutes of drilling, pinching, poking, clamping, and lip-stretching, plus an additional ten minutes of biting into gooey and gross substances, and -- to make matters worse-- I wasn't in the good hands my normal dentist, a family friend who's been doing my teeth since I was six and still calls me "Davey" . . . or "Marc," if he mixes me up with my brother . . . but he was swamped and so I was given to the other dentist in the office . . . a young Asian lady who works with her own assistant . . . but this didn't faze me because I had adopted a new dental persona for this visit (though I nearly chickened-out and skipped the appointment entirely . . . I almost drove by the Milltown exit and started towards the beach . . . I really didn't want to waste a day-off at the dentist's office) but once I got it into my head that I was actually going to this appointment, despite some serious white-coat anxiety, then I decided to conquer my cowardice and become a new patient, a bad-ass patient, and so I kept saying to myself: Behave as if you are a bad-ass . . . a veteran of the war in Afghanistan . . . a member of a motorcycle gang . . . a guy who wrestles alligators . . . a not a guy who likes to play soccer and tennis and reads poetry out loud for a living . . . and I pulled it off, I did a damn good job of it, I didn't complain, I only required one break (when I had to cough) and I didn't require any laughing gas or extra novocaine . . . and this was despite the fact that my dental team offered no encouragement whatsoever during the procedure -- these two were all business, they gave me no time frame -- unlike my dentist, who is constantly bantering, saying things like "Halfway done, Davey, just two more roots in there" -- but these two never said "boo," except when they chastised me for not raising my left hand high enough when I had to cough because I was drowning from my own phlegm . . . and so I endured ninety minutes of drilling without complaint, and when it was finally over, I expected a little something for the effort . . . maybe not total consciousness on my deathbed, maybe not a lollipop, but something . . . some acknowledgement that what I went through was painful, tedious, and uncomfortable, and that I handled it like a seriously bad-ass dude (but I guess a real bad-ass doesn't need confirmation that he's a bad-ass) but I got no such praise -- no compliment on my stoic attitude and uncomplaining mien -- and so I tried to fish for a little bit of appreciation . . . I said, "I hope I can talk tomorrow, or I won't be able to teach class," but this didn't work -- the mean assistant said, "You can talk now, you'll be fine," and then she left, and I realized that these two had no appreciation for my work, and probably expected people to behave the way I did . . . and so I will never behave that way again; next time I'm going to rinse every three minutes, take bathroom breaks, hit the gas, request a radio station, and generally bitch and gripe to my heart's content.
Motivation?
Sometimes it's hard to get up early on a Saturday morning and go to the gym -- but when you walk into the locker-room and smell that pungent sweat-stink, and see an old Japanese man drying his testicles with the community hair-dryer . . . if that doesn't inspire you, then nothing will.
Something Gained . . . and Something Lost
The New York Times ran an article last March about the "new model" for soccer in the United States, and as a coach I have been seeing this idea slowly being implemented in New Jersey . . . essentially, the United States Soccer Association wants to "uncouple high school soccer and the training of top youth players," and so these potential stars will not have the option to play for their town in the fall, instead these players must train and play year-round on regional Development Academy teams . . . so a good player essentially has to choose whether he will play for his school, or play on an elite team (and he also has to choose soccer as his only sport . . . no lacrosse or tennis or golf in the spring . . . no hoops in the winter . . . it's got to be soccer, soccer, soccer) and while this may help us compete with Brazil, Argentina, and Germany on the world stage, and while this may be good for the highest level of U.S. soccer, it's not going to be particularly good for acquiring a girlfriend . . . which is what playing high school sports is all about . . . because you're never going to impress a girl by explaining to them that you play on a Development Academy team-- a team that plays games in some faraway place against some other abstract Development Academy Team . . . most high school kids can't even communicate with the opposite sex well enough to ask someone on a date, let alone explain that nonsense . . . so while our soccer skills may increase, and while these players will certainly be able to focus completely on soccer -- because they won't have any girlfriends -- there is something terrible being lost here (and it's certainly not anyone's virginity).
Some Forecasts Are All Wet
Nate Silver's new book The Signal and the Noise: why so many predictions fail -- but some don't details his methods of assessing statistical probabilities of future events -- and he comes to the same conclusion as Yogi Berra: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future" and while this advice isn't groundbreaking, his treatment of it might be . . . he reminds us that we have a fantastically large amount of information available now, yet the accuracy of many of our predictions don't necessarily reflect this added information-- we still can't sift "the signal" out of the chaos, and so we need to know what "noise" to ignore -- and often the most significant information comes either in the tiny details, at the "more granular" level or in the big story . . . at a largely philosophical level (his explanation on how Standard and Poor's and Moody's blew the CDO risk assessment and contributed to the financial crisis is excellent) and while his explanation of how he built PECOTA -- an algorithm designed predict the success of baseball players over the course of their career -- is engaging and fun, my favorite chapter so far explains the truth about weather forecasting: the National Weather Service does a great job, but Weather.com and your local weatherman have a "wet bias," because the worst thing a weather service can do is NOT predict rain . . . so if there is a 5% or 10% or 15% chance of rain, Weather.com will say that there is a 20% chance of rain -- to avoid the ire of folks who might get rained on when they didn't think that there was a chance in hell it was going to rain . . . and since rain makes such good TV, on your local forecast, if they predict a 100% chance of rain, the rain only occurs 66% of the time . . . it's kind of like setting your clock a few minutes ahead so you're not late for work . . . you're fooling yourself for your own good.
My Son Alex Is So Skinny! How Skinny Is He?
Alex is so skinny that he when he wears skinny jeans, he looks like MC Hammer.
Sometimes You Have To Acknowledge What Is
I was moving towards the register at the Wawa when an absolutely stacked, off the pages of a magazine, Playboy Playmate quality woman -- the kind of woman that doesn't belong in East Brunswick, New Jersey, let alone a convenience store -- strolled in front of me . . . and at first I noticed that she was wearing tight corduroy pants and an even tighter sweater, and then I noticed her high cheekbones and silky hair and then I noticed what she was carrying . . . an entire box of 100 Grand Bars . . . and she placed the entire box of 100 Grand Bars on the counter; she then proceeded to count out ten bars, aloud: one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten . . . exactly one million dollars worth . . . while the cashier and I ogled her . . . and then she paid for them and walked out of our lives forever . . . but she left the box on the counter, as a reminder that she really was just there; once she was gone, the cashier looked at me and said, "That was the strangest and best thing that happened to me all day."
iPod Touch Justice
Last weekend, when my wife was preparing an overnight bag for my children (because they were slated to sleep over my parent's house) she discovered my iPod Touch in the sweatshirt pocket Alex had already packed . . . and so my wife realized that Alex was attempting to smuggle the device out of our house so he could play Angry Birds or Samurai Fruit or whatever else he has on there . . . and this was nothing new, as he had already been caught smuggling the iPod to school (I guess this is what you get when you don't have cable or a video game system) and so my wife decided to teach Alex a lesson . . . she surreptitiously removed the iPod Touch from the sweatshirt pocket and then finished packing the bag; Alex discovered that the iPod Touch was missing that evening when he was at my parent's house, and he assumed that he lost it, and that all holy hell was going to rain down on him . . . which was the exact effect that Catherine intended -- but there was one problem: she did not inform my parents that she unsmuggled the iPod Touch, and so they had to deal with Alex's misery as a reality . . . and he was really miserable because he knew he had royally screwed up . . . but when my parents called us to break the news, we were in the basement of Tumulty's -- which gets no cell-phone reception -- and we got home late and never checked our messages, so it wasn't until the next morning that Alex and my parents found out the truth; we all learned a lesson about the power these devices have over us, and if I wasn't committed to writing this stupid blog for the rest of my life, perhaps I would completely unplug myself and my family from all of them . . . iPods, laptops, televisions, cell-phones, toasters, microwaves, alarm clocks, digital watches . . . all of them!
Sensitive Student Saves Teacher's Job
Last week, I was moved from my classroom for several days because of make-up HSPA testing -- and so when I informed my classes of the change of venue, I also told them that this was a "test of their memory," and if they showed up late to class because they originally went to our normal classroom, then they had failed the test and would have to do ten push-ups . . . and I told them that I was certainly in jeopardy of failing the memory test as well, and many students confessed that they thought they were definitely going to fail . . . because it's really hard to escape "the clutches of the bell schedule" and then I had a great idea, and I told my students that I was going to make a big sign to put on the door with the correct classroom information and the addendum: "YOU FAILED . . . YOU FAILURE" and everyone thought that would be really funny and a great idea, and everyone was speculating on who was going to screw up and have to suffer the sign . . . except one student, who said, "I don't think you should do that because the kids taking the make-up test are going to read the sign and think it's directed at them and it's going to make them feel really bad," and I took a moment to process how stupid a mistake I almost made, and then I thanked the kid profusely and we all agreed that he did me a great service.
No Sex or Drugs, and Not Even That Much Rock'n'Roll
If you're looking for something similar to Hammer of the Gods, then do NOT read David Byrne's new book How Music Works . . . there are no sordid tales of fish-sex, drugs, and hotel orgies . . . instead Byrne offers his theories on how the context and setting of music is just as important as the composer, and he peppers his insights with anecdotes from his long, varied, and very experimental music career . . . here is an exercise that his dance choreographer, Noemie Lafrance, used during dance auditions, when they had to whittle a room of fifty hopefuls down to three lucky winners:
Rule #1) Improvise an eight count dance phrase to the music playing;
Rule #2) Once you have an eight beat phrase you like, then loop it . . . repeat it over and over;
Rule #3) When you see someone else with a stronger phrase, copy it;
Rule #4) When everyone is doing the same phrase, the exercise is over;
Byrne said it "was like watching evolution on fast forward" . . . the room started in chaos, and then pockets of order formed, and finally certain pockets "went viral" and within four minutes, the dancers were moving in perfect unison . . . and I feel like I could use this in class -- maybe with verbal chants and/or hand gestures rather than dance moves -- and it also sounds like a fun game to play at a party or in a bar (if you could get everyone to participate) and I tried to search on YouTube for an example of dancers doing this, but I had no luck . . . so if anyone has any ideas on how to implement this in a classroom, or does the exercise at a party or in a discoteque, please inform me of the results.
Meta-Debate
I missed the presidential debate last Wednesday -- The Walking Dead trumps politics . . . and remember, there won't be any politics once the zombies come . . . as Sheriff Rick says, "This isn't a democracy anymore" -- but I did enjoy the aftermath of the debate, especially the debate about who won the debate, and I even started a debate about who won the debate about who won the debate.
New Jersey Is Not San Diego
Every summer, I make grand plans for our back deck; I envision installing a retractable awning, or screening it and adding a roof, or even simply buying a pair of those giant, heavy duty umbrellas . . . but I never get to it, and then summer ends and I realize that the weather in central New Jersey is so disgusting that there is never a good time to sit on the back porch anyway . . . it's either too hot and humid, or too damp and humid, or too buggy, or too cold . . . and so we have this wonderful back porch, but the only resident who uses it much is the dog, who isn't as particular as the rest of us, and there's no way I'm buying a thousand dollar umbrella for him.
PAH!
As of now, I am still the sole member of PAH! (Parents Against Halloween!) but please take a moment and reflect: are we really going to do this again? the sugar meltdowns? the costumes? the aimless wandering around the neighborhood? the eating of all the extra candy? the diabetic comas? . . . and I'm willing to negotiate with the children . . . I'm willing to offer them firecrackers and BB guns and an go-carts, if they are willing forego this "holiday" . . . I'll even buy them a couple of candy bars-- but let's put our collective feet down -- they're only children and we can stand up to them and give All Hallow's Eve back to the witches and satanists . . . I'll even carve a jack'o'lantern . . . but I just don't want to deal with that giant bowl of processed sugar . . . I can't handle it and neither can they. I'll even give them 100 bucks!
Sometimes You Need To Let Your Head Breathe
I don't have a problem with wearing a visor, and you shouldn't either.
Exotic and Spicy Mystery Story
Last weekend, we got Indian food delivered from Delhi Garden, which is usually very accurate and reliable with to-go orders and delivery . . . but this time, when I brought the food inside, I noticed we were missing our uttapam, our nan, and one of our samosas . . . and so I sprinted out of the house, accompanied by my faithful dog, and caught the delivery guy before he drove away; I told him the story and showed him what we had, and so he called the restaurant, and then he called some of the other houses on his delivery run -- thinking that he gave someone an extra bag of food, but no dice-- and so he had to drive back up Route 27 to fetch the rest of our food . . . and the next morning, Catherine "solved" the mystery when she found a bag of Indian food in our vestibule; she assumed that one of the neighbors realized they had an extra bag of food and left it on our front porch, and that I had stupidly put it in the vestibule -- which already smells awful because of the piles of shoes, cleats, neoprene braces, and shin-guards -- but she assumed that when I got up to walk the dog that I didn't think about the malodorous combination I was creating, and instead of tossing the old Indian food into the garbage, I lazily chucked it into the shoe pile . . . but this was not the case . . . no one returned that bag of food: it was there the entire time, and then I remembered that I was late getting to the door to pay for the food, and the delivery guy opened the screen door and went into the vestibule, and then I opened the door, and the dog was running around, and in the confusion of the transaction -- I'm not really sure when, he must have put that bag down, or dropped it, or I put it down to pay him, and then we both forgot about it . . . I'm not sure if I ever noticed it at all, and he certainly must have forgotten that he handed me two bags, but that fact of the matter is that Delhi Garden was reliable in its order and delivery and we got an undeserved sack of food . . . but unless they read this blog, they will never know the truth.
At Least There's a Name For It
I was going to look up the weather on the internet -- to prepare for my son's soccer game -- but, as usual, I forgot where I had planned to drive on the digital super-highway, and I got lost on a back road and found this incredibly appropriate sniglet . . . Netheimer's: when you go to do something on the internet but forget what you were going to do.
Tracy Morgan Is NOT Tracy Jordan (Or Is He?)
The actual comedy of Tracy Morgan has very little to do with the endearingly bumbling sack of non sequiturs that 30 Rock calls Tracy Jordan . . . or at least that's what I surmised from Morgan's show at The State Theater in New Brunswick last week; Morgan's material is too profane for me to quote on this blog, and while it was very funny at times, and Morgan is astounding mimic -- whether he is singing Michael Jackson or the theme song from Good Times -- the show also had some remarkable low points . . . some strange Michael Richards-esque rants (which Morgan is known for) and a monologue where he came off as just shy of crazy (he seems to sincerely believe that the Moon landing is a hoax and that dinosaurs never existed . . . and there were no punch lines to this portion of the "comedy" act) and while I didn't love the show, I did love the conversation Connel, Craig, Anne and I had at Tumulty's after the show . . . but that was even filthier than Tracy Morgan's brand of humor, and so I can't transcribe it here either . . . but there was plenty of discussion about bestiality, swinging, and this amazing Dear Prudence column (also, Morgan's body refutes the old wive's tale that the camera adds twenty pounds to one's figure . . . he looks much fatter in person).
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